I considered an active social life as basic human necessity. Yet when it dawned on me just how much time I was spending socialising, I realised I may be taking it to an extreme. I calculated that, on average, I was spending 22 hours or more each week on social activities. So, to see what would happen to my work output, health and wellbeing, I decided to try and cut out my social life entirely.

    I knew, at times, I filled my schedule simply out of fear of missing out (FOMO), but also as a way to shift focus away from my work. For one month, I declined all in-person activities with friends: going out for drinks; dinners; parties and non-work related events, to see if it would make me more productive, improve my focus and career prospects.

    On day one of the month-long experiment, I had to fight some anxiety over missing out. But as the days passed, I started to relax. I only had one option to consider for Saturday night—to stay home—and this limitation left me more satisfied in my decision. I felt more content working, reading or watching TV.

    While I found more time to work, I also noticed a change in my overall health. I found myself cooking more at home, doing daily exercise, getting to bed earlier each night, reading, and enjoying moments of rest and boredom throughout the day.

    Having no social life left me more free time than I'd imagine. Such idle moments are vital for creativity, and mind wandering has been linked to creative problem solving. During the experiment I found myself regularly brainstorming new ideas and reimagining existing projects.

    Of course socialising is an important way to build work contacts. While one month of no social life did not impact my relationship with existing clients, if I had continued, it may harm my ability to build new ones.

    That cold January night, I was growing sick of my life in San Francisco. There I was, walking home at one in the morning after a tiring practice at the theatre. With opening night only a week away, I was still learning my lines. I was having trouble dealing with my part-time job at the bank and my acting at night at the same time. As I walked, I thought seriously about giving up both acting and San Francisco. City life had become too much for me.

    As I walked down empty streets under tall buildings, I felt very small and cold. I began running, both to keep warm and to keep away from any possible robbers. Very few people were still out except a few sad-looking homeless people under blankets.

    About a block from my apartment, I heard a sound behind me. I turned quickly, half expecting to see someone with a knife or a gun. The street was empty. All I saw was a shining streetlight. Still, the noise had made me nervous, so I started to run faster. Not until I reached my apartment building and unlocked the door did I realize what the noise had been. It had been my wallet falling to the sidewalk.

    Suddenly I wasn't cold or tired anymore. I ran out of the door and back to where I'd heard the noise. Although I searched the sidewalk anxiously for fifteen minutes, my wallet was nowhere to be found. Just as I was about to give up the search, I heard the garbage truck(垃圾车) pull up to the sidewalk next to me. When a voice called from the inside,  "Alisa Camacho?" I thought I was dreaming. How could this man know my name? The door opened, and out jumped a small red-haired man with an amused look in his eye. "Is this what you're looking for?" he asked, holding up a small square shape.

    It was nearly 3 a.m. by the time I got into bed. I wouldn't get much sleep that night, but I had gotten my wallet back. I also had gotten back some enjoyment of city life. I realized that the city couldn't be a bad place as long as people were willing to help each other.

    Arriving in Sydney on his own from India, my husband, Rashid, stayed in a hotel for a short time while looking for a house for me and our children.

    During the first week of his stay, he went out one day to do some shopping. He came back in the late afternoon to discover that his suitcase was gone. He was extremely worried as the suitcase had all his important papers, including his passport.

    He reported the case to the police and then sat there，lost and lonely in strange city, thinking of the terrible troubles of getting all the paperwork organized again from a distant country while trying to settle down in a new one.

    Late in the evening, the phone rang. It was a stranger. He was trying to pronounce my husband's name and was asking him a lot of questions. Then he said they had found a pile of papers in their trash can（垃圾桶）that had been left out on the footpath.

    My husband rushed to their home to find a kind family holding all his papers and documents. Their young daughter had gone to the trash can and found a pile of unfamiliar papers. Her parents had carefully sorted them out, although they had found mainly foreign addresses on most of the documents. At last they had seen a half-written letter in the pile in which my husband had given his new telephone number to a friend.

    That family not only restored the important documents to us that day but also restored our faith and trust in people. We still remember their kindness and often send a warm wish their way.

    Allen Cook and his daughter Melissa were renovating(整修) her house, when they found a beautiful, heart-warming love story. "The envelope in the ceiling was old and yellow. It had never been opened, It was unbelievable when my son-in-low started reading it. In the letter she was talking about the baby she was going to have," Allen Cook said.

    The story began in May 4, 1945, the typed letter was written by a woman named Virginia to her husband, Rolf Christoffersen. At the time, he was a sailor in the Norwegian navy. The envelope was marked "return to sender" and never found its way to her husband. Allen's daughter used the Internet to find the phone number of someone named Rolf Christoffersen and gave him a call, leading her to his son in Santa Barbara, California.

    "Someone called me at my office. They just googled my name because I have the same name as my father. Melissa asked me where I grew up and I told her. She told me she had the letter," Christoffersen's son, 66 now, said. The younger Christoffersen wasn't yet born when his mother Virginia wrote the letter, but he said her words were very special to him. His mother, who died six years ago, wrote about her love for her husband.

    "I love you Rolf, as I love the warm sun, and that is what you are for my life, the sun about which everything else revolves around me," she wrote. Seventy-two years later, her words were finally heard by her husband. Christoffersen immediately called his father, who is now 96. And read the letter to him over the phone. "I was so surprised after all these years. I was very emotional," the elder Christoffersen said.

    The long-lost letter was finally received just before Mother's Day; it was another tangible connection to Virginia Christoffersen. "It's Mother's Day and reading her words reminded me just what a wonderful person she was and how much she loved us" her son said, through tears.

Jack Horner is co-author of the book How to Build a Dinosaur. However, he is most famous for his role as consultant(顾问) on all four Jurassic Park films, including the new film Jurassic World.

The original film Jurassic Park tells the story of a theme park where dinosaurs live. In that movie, scientists used DNA collected by ancient mosquitoes that had been trapped in amber shortly after they drank dinosaur blood. The scientists used this dinosaur DNA to create baby dinosaurs. The scientists in Jurassic Park created various types of dinosaurs, but in the real world there is one big problem with the story. It turns out that DNA could not possibly survive the 65 million years since the death of the dinosaurs.

The new movie creates the Indominus Rex. This idea of creating a hybrid species is something Horner has explored before. In 2011, he gave a speech in which he discussed producing a dinosaur by working with the genes of a bird. Modern birds are the closest living relative of dinosaurs.

The concept of using the genes of different animals to create new animals is called transgenic science. And this type of science has already produced some interesting results — goats that produce spider silk in their milk, cows that produce proteins for medicines that can treat diseases, and a pig that produces less-polluting waste thanks to a bit of mouse DNA. However, none of these examples are close to the dinosaurs in Jurassic World. And for a good reason — genetics is a very complex science. Producing a new species is not as simple as just exchanging a few genes around.

In the end, Jurassic World is all about fun.

My challenge for you is this: to read a book for 15 minutes every single day for a month.

Let me explain a bit, by telling you where the challenge came from. I have many things in common with my dad, like music taste and sense of humor, but sadly reading isn't one of them. I can happily spend a whole day with a book, but my dad can't read a book for longer than about 5 minutes. He reads emails, websites and papers for work, but not books. He's busy, so I think sitting down to read for just 15 minutes a day is a good way to relax and to introduce him to reading.

My dad is not the only person who avoids books. I know lots of people would rather relax on their computers or in front of the TV. Everyone is different and has their own interests, but I think there are lots of benefits to reading, which screen-based activities don't have.

Firstly, it's better for your eyes. Looking at screens can be very stressful for your eye muscles, and clearly you should avoid looking at screens for an hour before bed, to get a good night's sleep.

One thing I personally love reading, is being transported to another world—I would often forget the time or things around me! Reading is a great way to switch off before you go to bed, because you think more about the world of the book, rather than the real world, so you can truly relax. I know you can be transported to a different world in a film or a TV show, but I think books do it better.

I also enjoy hearing what people are doing and finding out what they think. Reading gives me the chance to get to know hundreds of new people! It also teaches you to see things from other people's point of view, and understand other people's decisions or opinions. With a book, you can hear everything a character is thinking or feeling—you really can be inside someone else's head!

So give it a go! Take 15 minutes when you are waking up, going to bed, eating lunch, or having a coffee. If you read a lot, why not try 15 minutes of an English book, or pass the challenge on to someone else? Good luck, and happy reading!